Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#251

Post by indubitable » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 8:04 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #14

indubitable wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not based on GDP. A big part of the USD's stability has been based on an indirect oil backing. Going back to the 70s the US in which we offered substantial benefits to oil producing nations in exchange for little more than them only selling their oil in USD, and then investing excess revenues in US securities. The petrodollar in another word. This has numerous positive effects other than what I'm mentioning h…

I have been wondering this myself and oil seems like a good explanation. What is the explanation for Japan? They don't have oil and they have greater debt than the us (relatively), yet they haven't been met with anything worse than stagnation.

One major difference there is that Japanese debt is mostly held by Japanese institutions. By contrast countries like Greece (and the US) have most of their debt in foreign hands. This dramatically changes the calculus there. Greece could not 'print' euros to pay off its debt, even if it wanted to. Japan can. And as a consequence of their 'nationalization' of debt, they also pay much lower interest - comparable to what we do, in fact.

Even then, I think you have keep things in perspective. 'Just stagnation' understates the situation here. In the late 80s many thought Japan was literally going to take over the world economically. Their GDP today is now lower than it was 2 decades ago. And ultimately there is still no clear path for them out of this decline.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#252

Post by skgoa » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 9:25 AM UTC

endisukaj wrote: post #182

skgoa wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that seems to be a pretty big leap in logic. Europe doesn't need a unified nationstate, if it has strong institutions that fullfil nationstate-esque functions. We are at a good level of that on economic, monetary and judicial matters. The fiscal issues of the EU are in the process of shaking themselves out. What we are lacking is effective military cooperation. Even NATO is not very good at this, unless the US is…

If you have fiscal cooperation, a single currency, a governmental body that forces regulations and laws to its member states and in the end even a unified army (which I think will happen in the future, especially since the US is taking more and more of an isolationist approach to foreign policy) isn't that closer to a federation than it is to a simple trade union? Not all federations need to be a massive nationstate…

Yes, that is exactly my point. People are pushing for a "federalization" of the EU, when really we have institutions that do the bulk of what a federal state would do already and could put the ones we still need in place without making significant changes to the current framework.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#253

Post by dahauns » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 10:37 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #245

swarnie_ wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you make any cars which are viable in Europe?

There are plenty of brands common on European roads that are American brands. Opel and Ford being the non-luxury examples. Oh and if you take the "but designed and built in ..." standard, then there simply is no European car anymore. Most components are Chinese, Indian, or at the very least Eastern European (outside of EU)

a) Opel is owned by PSA.

b) That's simply not true. Automotive supply chains indeed are quite global nowadays, in this regard you could say there's simply no car anymore, for any given country/region. But - in contrast to other sectors - the automotive industry (including parts industry) is HUGE in the EU, including actual manufacturing.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#254

Post by eksemplar » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:16 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #247

eksemplar wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m Danish. I did specify “native > English > ..,” though, so I figured that gave the non-English native thing away. Our most utilized languages in business and tourism used to be English, German and French. It’s now German, Chinese and English, in that order. In everyday usage English is still important and will remain so for years to come. But if you’re looking for languages with professional application Chinese is…

>It’s now German, Chinese and English, in that order. >business and tourism A search of the number of tourists from different countries visiting Denmark shows that the number of tourists from the UK and America still dwarf the number of visitors from China. So I'm not sure why you'd say that Chinese is more important than English for tourism. It also looks like Germans have always been the largest group visiting Denm…

We’ve had 300.000 Chinese tourists since August. I’m not sure how many Americans have been by in the same period, but in a typical year we get maybe 10.000.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#255

Post by mcv » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:25 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #209

mcv wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is indeed a lot wrong with the EU, as there is with the US and China. But of the three, the EU seems to care the most about protecting regular people from abuse and oppression. They're not perfect about it, and there's a lot of different forces at play in the EU, but on the whole, I tend to like their approach more than those of the US and China.

Likewise, although it has only been recently that my opinion of human rights in the USA has declined — America takes its constitutional rights very seriously, or it seemed to until Snowden.

They went wrong way before Snowden. Guantanamo at least. Patriot Act, arguably. And then there's a rather disgusting way the Vietnam War was waged. Or the systemic racism that goes way back, regularly with deadly consequences.

The US has lofty goals and noble promises, but has always fallen far short.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#256

Post by NicoJuicy » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #248

NicoJuicy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? I only know some people who own a Tesla, otherwise, that's it

For instance, Ford still makes up something like 8% of Europe's market ( http://shareholder.ford.com/~/media/Files/F/Ford-IR/events-a... ) -- maybe not the unstoppable juggernaut of the continent, but a lot of vehicles. And there are a number of European Ford models not even available for sale in the US (mostly hatchbacks). That's just one maker. Perhaps they sell better in the UK than continental Europe or something…

Okay, forgot about Ford. You are right about them

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#257

Post by learc83 » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #254

learc83 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s now German, Chinese and English, in that order. >business and tourism A search of the number of tourists from different countries visiting Denmark shows that the number of tourists from the UK and America still dwarf the number of visitors from China. So I'm not sure why you'd say that Chinese is more important than English for tourism. It also looks like Germans have always been the largest group visiting Denm…

We’ve had 300.000 Chinese tourists since August. I’m not sure how many Americans have been by in the same period, but in a typical year we get maybe 10.000.

Where are you getting these numbers from? The CIA factbook says over 300k Americans visit Denmark every year, and the information I can find on Chinese tourists says Denmark was estimated to get less than 300k Chinese tourists in all of 2017 (it was updated in Nov 2017).

Also Denmark gets close to a million British visitors per year. And then add to that the number of visitors from countries who are very likely to speak English as a second language, and the people from countries like Ireland, Canada, and Australia.

I think the problem here is that you don't notice all of the English speakers because they just don't stick out as much as Chinese tourists do. Sure you can notice the obvious tourists, but there are plenty of them that you wouldn't know were tourists unless you talked them. Chinese culture is also much different, so they are even more likely to stick out.

In addition, I'm going to guess that Chinese tourists are a common topic of conversation and news coverage, at least more so than English speaking tourists are because it's a change from the norm--you have to change if you want to accommodate them. This can lead to you over-representing Chinese tourists in your mental model.